"Race, Wrongs, And Remedies"
That's the name of Amy Wax's book, arguing against the notion that the government should be the main force that provides help to the black community. John McWhorter reviews her book at TNR:

As she puts it, "That blacks did not, in an important sense, cause their current predicament does not preclude charging them with alleviating it if nothing else will work."

Wax is well aware that past discrimination created black-white disparities in education, wealth, and employment. Still, she argues that discrimination today is no longer the "brick wall" obstacle it once was, and that the main problems for poor and working-class blacks today are cultural ones that they alone can fix. Not that they alone should fix--Wax is making no moral argument--but that they alone can fix.

A typical take on race has no room for stories such as this one. In 1987, a rich philanthropist in Philadelphia "adopted" 112 inner-city sixth-graders, most of them from broken homes. He guaranteed them a fully-funded education through college if the kids would refrain from drugs, unwed parenthood, and crime. He even provided tutors, workshops, after-school programs, summer programs, and counselors when trouble arose. Forty-five of the kids never made it through high school. Thirteen years later, of the sixty-seven boys, nineteen were felons; the forty-five girls had sixty-three total children, and more than half had their babies before the age of eighteen. Crucially, this was not surprising: The reason was culture. These children had been nurtured in communities with different norms than those that reign in Scarsdale.

What this means, Wax points out, is that scrupulous recountings of the historical reasons for black problems are of no significant use in finding solutions. She notes:

The black family was far more stable 50 years ago, when conditions for blacks were far worse than they are today. Black out-of-wedlock births started to climb and marriage rates to fall around 1960, long after slavery was abolished and just as the civil rights movement gained momentum. Perhaps a more nuanced explanation for the recent deterioration is that the legacy of slavery made the black family more vulnerable to the cultural subversions of the 1960s. But what does this tell us that is useful today? The answer is: nothing.

One of the most sobering observations made by Wax comes in the form of a disarmingly simple calculus presented first by Isabel Sawhill and Christopher Jencks. If you finish high school and keep a job without having children before marriage, you will almost certainly not be poor. Period. I have repeatedly felt the air go out of the room upon putting this to black audiences. No one of any political stripe can deny it. It is human truth on view. In 2004, the poverty rate among blacks who followed that formula was less than 6 percent, as opposed to the overall rate of 24.7 percent. Even after hearing the earnest musings about employers who are less interested in people with names like Tomika, no one can gainsay the simple truth of that advice. Crucially, neither bigotry nor even structural racism can explain why an individual does not live up to it.

By 2005, the National Center For Health Statistics reported that the rate of out-of-wedlock births for blacks stood at almost 70 percent. As I've said before, black leaders like Jesse Jackson should be stigmatizing single motherhood in the black community.

I try to do that myself, when I speak at an inner-city high school about once a month during the school year, telling kids that all the stuff I'm showing them that they can do, if they just work hard, will not come to pass if they have a baby as babies. Plus, they'll surely end up raising their child in poverty.

Well, I talk to kids once, for an hour and a half, in one of their high school classes. I want to get my volunteer speaker program to be established in schools across the country, from the youngest grades on, but that hasn't happened yet. Also, it's just one tiny drop in the bucket, and really no substitute for a mommy and a daddy in the home.

Per the Weekly Standard link above, from a story by Duncan Currie:

The connection between family breakdown and child poverty is well established. In a 1991 American Sociological Review article, David J. Eggebeen and Daniel T. Lichter estimated that if black family composition had remained constant from 1960 to 1988, the black child poverty rate in 1988 would have been 28.4 percent instead of 45.6 percent. If black family composition had remained constant from 1980 to 1988, Eggebeen and Lichter said, the black child poverty rate in 1988 would have been 40 percent instead of 45.6 percent.

"This implies that changing black family structure in the 1980s accounted for roughly 65 percent of the increase in official poverty among black children," they noted. "Black family shifts in the 1980s also accounted for 51 percent of the increase in deep poverty, and about 90 percent of the growth in relative child poverty." Family breakdown also had an intensifying effect on the child poverty rates of whites, but it "had a much greater effect on the child poverty rates of blacks."

Comments

No one in today's society wants to hear that they are responsible for their own lives. This is especially antithetical to the black culture of victimhood, and the liberal policies that subsidize it.

Bradley13
at August 13, 2010 3:11 AM

Truth hurts.

Juliana
at August 13, 2010 3:49 AM

> black leaders like Jesse Jackson should be
> stigmatizing single motherhood in
> the black community.

Should they be stigmatizing gay parenthood? Do you want a father in the home or don't you?

Crid [CridComment at gmail]
at August 13, 2010 5:15 AM

Hard for Jesse Jackson to stigmatize single motherhood in the black community when he's 50% responsible for the creation of a child being raised by a single mother.

If you finish high school and keep a job without having children before marriage, you will almost certainly not be poor. Period.

Maybe I'm just cynical, but I find the lack of willingness to believe that stark truth to be fairly widespread. It's one of the cold equations, but many people shy away from it because it sounds so harsh and unforgiving. But yes, it's one of the absolutes. Are there exceptions? Sure. Crystal Bowersox and Bristol Palin will almost certainly never be poor. But the exceptions are often portrayed in ways that make them seem to be aspirational targets for others. It's turning me into a curmudgeon before my time.

marion
at August 13, 2010 5:52 AM

And yet the blacks vote almost in lock-step for Democrats. The party of Jim Crow, the party that fought the Civil Rights act. The party that cynically accuses Republicans of wanting to turn back the clock to the days of slavery.

The Democrats were the ones who created the welfare system that replaced daddy with government. That's the watershed moment I don't see referenced in these excerpts.

The Democrats wanted to keep the black man down, and when the courts wouldn't let them do it through segregation, they found a way to destroy the nuclear family instead. And created a permanent dependent class in the process.

brian
at August 13, 2010 6:19 AM

The Democrats wanted to keep the black man down, and when the courts wouldn't let them do it through segregation, they found a way to destroy the nuclear family instead.

Never blame on malice what can be explained by incompetence.

I doubt there was an evil plan. Conspiracy theories downplay the serious negative consequences simple incompetence can have. Lots of people who instituted the policies we have today had good intentions. They thought they were helping. They were just wrong.

MonicaP
at August 13, 2010 6:26 AM

Should they be stigmatizing gay parenthood? Do you want a father in the home or don't you?

Crid, you have this weird bone up your butt about gay parenting. Research by Judith Stacey and Timothy Bednarz shows that children of gay parents do as well as children of straight parents. What matters is intact families.

Amy, research also showed that human activity was altering the weather and that global warming was going to increase the number and intensity of hurricanes.

Research can be wrong.

brian
at August 13, 2010 7:02 AM

Research can be wrong.

It can be. But if we're not basing policy on science, then we're basing it on our fuzzy feelings about things, which are even more suspect. If studies 10 years from now show that gay parents raise serial killers, I will change my opinion.

MonicaP reminds us: "Never blame on malice what can be explained by incompetence. "

True, but on the other hand, incompetence neither excuses it, nor provides a justification for not fixing it. Picture this imaginary scenario: A meeting, in a deserted warehouse in an out-of-the-way area, somewhere in the South. Circa 1960. The Grand Dragons of the Ku Klux Klan are all present.

And they aren't happy. One of them summarizes the situation: "For almost 80 years now, we've been trying to drive blacks out of the country. We've burned crosses; we've paraded, we've lynched. We've scared and harmed a lot of individual black people and we've killed some. And yet the black community keeps on keeping on. Look at the Buffalo Soldiers. Look at Tuskegee and the Tuskegee Airmen. Look at guys like George Carver and Booker T. Washington. Heck, look at Booker T. Jones. These guys are making a lot of progress. And nothing we are doing is stopping them. We need to try something else."

A voice from the back of the room: "We need to go progressive."

"Huh?" "What are you talking about, man?"

"Go progressive. Forget all the expressions of hatred. Go compassionate. Here's the plan: Offer to pay their women to have and raise children. Tell them they don't need their men; tell them that the government will provide them with the benefits of having a husband, without them having to get married or get a job. Make it easy for them to sit home and watch that new-fangled television box all day."

"What else?"

"Play to base instincts. Celebrate the traits of the worst people in their community. Make excuses for the ones who do drugs and commit crimes. Sell them the myth that African culture is superior to Western culture. If their kids flunk school, graduate them anyway. If they make good grades, make fun of them and tell them they're acting white. Face it, guys, attacking the community from the outside isn't working. Get inside their community and gut it from within."

"Anything else?"

"We need some operatives. Find a few black guys who hate white people but love white people's money. Buy them off and then play to their prejudices. Reinforce in them the idea that the right thing to do is the opposite of whatever whites do. And then use the media to set them up as people who speak for all blacks."

"So can we get rid of these stupid robes and hoods now?"

"No. We have to keep stirring the pot. Our chosen black leaders need foils, something to play off of. They have to convince blacks that all of their problems are due to external enemies. They must be convinced that they are blameless for whatever happens to them, and that racism is so bad that they have no hope of survival without government intervention."

"What happens then?"

"The black community breaks down. If the government is taking care of you, who needs a community? It'll destroy itsef, and we'll never have to lift a finger."

"So is this like Farmer Joe over in Clay County who's on that new-fangled government program where he gets paid to not grow cotton?"

"Sort of."

Cousin Dave
at August 13, 2010 7:45 AM

Amy, research also showed that human activity was altering the weather and that global warming was going to increase the number and intensity of hurricanes.

Which research? it was often claimed these things would happen. But I can also point you to research by Gray and Landsea that in the mid 1990s the tropical Atlantic basin was trending into a more active period much like the 1950's, and the 1930's before that. And the last couple of years have been...quiet.

http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2010/08/13/race_wrongs_and.html#comment-1742405">comment from I R A Darth Aggie

You might notice that I never blog on climate change. Climatology is extremely complicated, and I don't have a physics background, and know that I'm not qualified to discern what is and isn't valid and reliable data.

I am, however, able to read studies from anthropology, evolutionary psychology and sociology, and discern whether sample sizes are adequate, for example, whether data is being misinterpreted, whether there's bias, and whether the study is too flawed to really tell us anything (all studies are flawed; some just have fewer or smaller flaws).

"Society has for its element man, who is a free agent; and since he is free, he may choose - since he may choose, he may be mistaken - since he may be mistaken, he may suffer"

The truth was out there long before Sawhill & Jencks did their calculations about dropping out of school & having a litter of kids.

Martin
at August 13, 2010 9:42 AM

I don't think that the current situation is the result of a conspiracy either, but I do think that white supremacy plays a role. The counterpoint of black's adoption of a victim identity is that influential whites have gladly promoted and institutionalized this view. It's the correct image of blacks among 'socially conscious' whites.

As McWhorter has pointed out elsewhere, black nationalism and radicalism were largely engineered by white intellectuals and social engineers. Most black nationalists were white. The image of black identity that's promoted and enforced by these movements tokenizes blacks. It makes their identity dependent on whites, as a response to white oppression, rather than a sovereign and organic concept of identity. It's contingent.

Someone could be forgiven for assuming that the modern system of racial identity is an attempt to rehabilitate white supremacy. It credits only whites, and perhaps asians, with agency. The other races are just puppets.

Kunta Kinte
at August 13, 2010 11:46 AM

@Kunta Kinte - And?

brian
at August 13, 2010 12:22 PM

I pretty much agree with that take. There are in fact white supremacists -- but they aren't who or what most people think they are. The Left's approach towards minorities pretty much consists of all of the bad points about colonialism, without any of the good points. Basically, they regard blacks as a client class, dependent on the leftist betters for their very existence. (It's not really all that new either; you can find examples going back to Reconstruction, e.g., the Freedmen's Bank.) And sadly, a lot of blacks seem to have bought into that way of thinking. Not all, certainly, but a lot.

Cousin Dave
at August 13, 2010 3:34 PM

I just read the transcript from the Dr. Laura show, and ... WTF?

She didn't say anything wrong! Yes, 'N-----' is a word the Knights who Say Nee (white people) cannot say. But she was quoting!

Why is she apologizing?

What bullshit.

Pirate Jo
at August 13, 2010 4:06 PM

The thing about the liberal attitude towards many minorities is that it's insulting. It's like "look at you poor people who can't do it on your own".

KrisL
at August 13, 2010 7:00 PM

> Research by Judith Stacey and Timothy Bednarz
> shows that

Yes yes, this is the part where you pretend to be a scientist. You don't think children need fathers, and you ought to have the courage to say so.

http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2010/08/13/race_wrongs_and.html#comment-1742600">comment from Crid [CridComment at gmail]

I think children need two parents and that they need male role models. I don't care particularly about what people want when it comes to kids, but it seems that children of gay parents turn out very well.

What does a role model do? How much time of "role modeling" does a kid need to turn out "very well"? Come on Amy, this is science! Show me the study that quantifies the "role modeling" men do for their kids, and how it's easily fulfilled by any old man.

http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2010/08/13/race_wrongs_and.html#comment-1742693">comment from momof4

The research shows that children of gay parents turn out as well as children of straight parents. I believe male role models are important. People don't have to be having sex with a child's mother (and witness many marriages where that disappears) to be a consistent and essential part of a child's life.

SO...why won't people admit that when one course of action(single motherhood) is significantly harder than another (intact 2 parent family), a lot more people(single mothers) will fail to do well?

Robert
at August 14, 2010 12:39 PM

On a related note, I've heard that research supports that gay's can make successful parents (as in raising a child that does not OD, live in poverty, or end up in jail)

But what I'm not familiar with is the specifics under which said studies were conducted. Did they find existing couples? Did they measure economic and education status of the parents? Was there an extended family structure? How did they actually measure "success"? I'd like to see more of this research.

Robert
at August 14, 2010 12:43 PM

On yet another note:

If people want proof that racism is basically irrelevant to the progress of modern black men and women, one need only look at the status of African immigrants.

I served beside several Nigerians, Jamaicans, and other African nationals pursuing American citizenship, and not a one of them failed, that worked hard studied hard, and continued to pursue their ambitions.

Black Americans born in the U.S. in certain regions seem to have generational issues repeating themselves. If racism were the issue, it would be an issue for both, not merely one.

Robert
at August 14, 2010 12:48 PM

Amy, research also showed that human activity was altering the weather and that global warming was going to increase the number and intensity of hurricanes.

I'm sorry but wasnt there a big news story about how that reaserch was FAKED?

lujlp
at August 14, 2010 5:28 PM

I think the truck driver analogy, she presents in her book, is lacking, but let’s take it to the logical conclusion. Let’s say that a truck driver captured and enslaved a pedestrian in order to break his legs continuously. Then let’s say he forces this captured and enslaved pedestrian to breed, in order for the truck driver’s children to have pedestrians to run over, as well. The truck driver justifies his behavior, because he pays for the medical bills. The let’s say this happens over a few hundred years. Then let’s say the State forces the truck driver to only hit the pedestrian once a year instead of whenever he wants, but the truck driver no longer has to pay for the medical bills. The pedestrian is responsible, now. (The truck driver even had a fight with his brother over the treatment of the pedestrian). This “freedom” to hit the pedestrian and her descendants once a year, without paying for their medical bills, lasts about 100 years.